A heat-dissipating device, e.g. a fan, is often used to dissipate the heat generated due to the operation of the electronic device. The heat dissipation is always the essential problem in the application of electronic devices. A good heat-dissipating mechanism usually represents a stable performance of the electronic device. If an electronic device is operated under an abnormally dissipating condition, it will inevitably lead to an unstable performance and reduce its useful life.
Typically, a general electronic device only needs a fan. However, a high-level electronic system needs more fans so as to sufficiently dissipate the generated heat. Further, using more fans is helpful for increasing the stability of the electronic system. Currently, many high-level electronic appliances have heat-dissipating devices that are hot swappable. For example, a hot swappable heat-dissipating device is widely used to a server of a computer system. The heat-dissipating device is designed to be feasible for hot swap by being mounted thereon terminal connectors for receiving power or signals from the system. In other words, when the heat-dissipating device can be changed in case of malfunction, test or maintenance without turning off the system.
In order to attain the purpose of hot swap, there are many kinds of designs for fan module. Please refer to FIG. 1A which is a schematic diagram of a conventional fan module 11. Two fans 11 are electrically connected with a terminal connector 12 through a plurality of conductive wires 13 and the terminal connector 12 is electrically connected to a receptacle of a system (not shown) when these two fans 11 are combined together by screws and inserted into the system frame 14 for transmitting the power or signal between the system as shown in FIG. 1B. In such a high-level electronic system, these two fans are viewed as a fan module and a plurality of fan modules are inserted in the system frame in parallel for increasing the stability of the system.
However, this way still results in the difficulty to lead so many conductive wires. Furthermore, when one of these fan modules is malfunctioned in operation, it is uneasy to disassemble and replace it. Moreover, when one fan in the fan module is out of order, the entire fan module must be replaced, thereby resulting in an increased cost.
Thus, it is desirable to develop a hot swappable heat-dissipating module to overcome the above-described drawbacks and provide more convenient use and design for users and system designers in a limited space.